Velazquez, Diego

Velazquez: The Technique of Genius

In this beautiful and engaging book, an art historian and a conservation scientist discuss the techniques Vel‡zquez created in order to realize his artistic vision. Examining thirty works by Vel‡zquez that span his entire career, the authors show how his technical achievement developed over time.

The Vexations of Art: Velazquez and Others

Diego Velazquez: 1599-1660; The Face of Spain (Basic Art)

Velazquez: Painter and Courtier

Velazquez in Seville

In this beautifully illustrated book, an international team of art scholars explores the importance of Seville for Velzquez in his formative years. Discussions range from Vel zquez`s education, training, and subject matter to Sevillian culture Catholic theology, and picaresque literature.

Velazquez

Manet/Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)

After an exhausting trip to Madrid to see paintings by Diego Velásquez, Édouard Manet declared in a letter that the seventeenth-century master was "the greatest artist," He was also the greatest influence on Manet, whose bold handling of color and space had revolutionized figure painting. Manet/Velásquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting accompanied an landmark exhibition that opened in Paris in 2002 and traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Lavishly illustrated--with nearly 400 color reproductions and more than 300 in black-and-white--the book is a consolation prize for art lovers who missed the show. Actually, the Manet-Velásquez connection is just one aspect of this wide-ranging survey of French 19th-century culture, bolstered by a detailed chronology. (This inclusive outlook even extends to the influence of Spanish painting on nineteenth-century American artists.) Most essays are packed with scholarly details likely to be of more interest to specialists than to the general reader. Still, the historical outline is intriguing. For generations, the only foreign artists the French thought worthy of interest were the Italians and the Dutch. Napoleon changed all that, inadvertently, when he invaded Spain and brought back artistic plunder for the fledgling Louvre. Although the museum's Spanish art holdings subsequently had a checkered history, the die was cast. French Romantic artists and poets found a soul mate in Goya, the eighteenth-century artist whose hallucinatory vision and social commentary seemed tailor-made for the 1830s. Three decades later, the shrewd pictorial intelligence of Velásquez was the key that unlocked a new directness in art. —Cathy Curtis

In 1804, at the dawn of the French Empire, there were no more than a handful of Spanish paintings in public collections in France. During the course of the nineteenth century, however, French collectors and museums assembled substantial holdings of works by such Spanish masters as Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán, Murillo, and Goya. At the same time, French writers and artists—among them Delacroix, Géricault, Courbet, Millet, Bonnat, Degas, and, especially, Manet—came to understand, appreciate, and even emulate Spanish painting of the Golden Age.

This beautiful book features over 150 works by French and Spanish artists, charting the development of this cultural influence and mapping a fascinating shift in the paradigm of painting: from Idealism to Realism, from Italy to Spain, from Renaissance to Baroque. Above all, it vividly demonstrates how direct contact with Spanish painting fired the imagination of nineteenth-century French artists and brought about the triumph of Realism in the 1860s, and with it a foundation for modern art. American artists of the second half of the nineteenth century often turned to Europe for training and inspiration. Whistler, Cassatt, Eakins, Chase, and Sargent all traveled to Spain for firsthand exposure to its artistic heritage and experienced the thrill of discovering Spanish painting. Also included in this volume are works by American artists that clearly reflect the pervasive influence of and taste for Spanish painting.

The Cambridge Companion to VelAzquez

The Cambridge Companion to Velázquez offers a synthetic overview of one of the greatest painters of Golden Age Spain and seventeenth century Europe. With contributions from art historians and those working in other disciplines, this book offers fresh approaches to the vast literature on this artist. The essays also guide the reader to an understanding of Velázquez's work--his training in his native Seville, reflections in his oeuvre of artistic currents from outside Spain, and how Velázquez's religious paintings may be understood within the religious context of Counter-Reformation Spain.

The Cambridge Companion to Velázquez offers a synthetic overview of one of the greatest painters of Golden Age Spain and seventeenth century Europe as a whole. With contributions from art historians and those working in other disciplines, this book offers fresh approaches to the vast literature on this artist. The essays also guide the reader to an understanding of Velázquez's work --his training in his native Seville, reflections in his oeuvre of artistic currents from outside Spain, and how Velázquez's religious paintings may be understood within the religious context of Counter-Reformation Spain.

Velazquez (Rizzoli Art Classics)

The Rizzoli Art Classics series brings you Piero della Francesca, Titian, Caravaggio, and Velázquez, all in beautifully illustrated monographs, offering high-quality reproductions in compact, accessible volumes. These books feature a literary introduction by a renowned art historian, a thoroughly researched essay, and captions describing the artist's most famous canvases. A useful appendix section includes an extensive chronology of the artist's life and important historical events of his time; a compilation of writings by well-known historians, insight into each painter's stylistic development; a geographical table detailing the location of each painting in the book; and a concise bibliography with suggested further readings.With authoritative text by leading art historians, these lavishly illustrated editions provide fresh insight into the art and lives of some of the most fascinating artists in the history of painting.

Velazquez (National Gallery Publications)